On Thursday morning, 52 elaborate art installations, ranging from a giant kitchen table and chairs to a walk-through kaleidoscope, will be open to interpretation on the double-wide sidewalks of Market Street. On Saturday evening, the exhibition ends, and by Monday morning, it will all be gone without a trace.

Eighteen months of planning and $373,000 will have gone into this three-day show, and that’s not counting the contribution expected of passersby. Public opinion — as measured by interaction with the art, street surveys, census sensors and social media — will determine which 10 or 12 artworks out of the 52 could return later as long-term public art.

This unique experiment in pedestrian participation is called the Market Street Prototyping Festival, “an effort to involve citizens in shaping the future of Market Street,” says Deborah Cullinan, chief executive officer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is co-sponsoring the project with the San Francisco Planning Department.

The sidewalk artworks you will see are prototypes, or rough models, built on commission. The winners will be sent back to the studio to be revised and reinforced to withstand the beating taken by anything, and anybody, that is permanent on Market Street.